Cryorig has won many awards for their high-end air cooling products, pushing the limits of what is possible for air cooling and delivering some of the best aesthetics the market has ever seen. Now they’re turning their cooling abilities to the world of AIO water coolers, and today we have their top model, the A80 , a 280mm hybrid AIO that is sure to help you take command of your CPU, even when pushing high-end overclocks. The problem with AIO coolers is that they take the heat from the CPU and move it to the edge of the case and blow the heat through the radiator with fans, this is great for the CPU, however, it means that your motherboard and surrounding components don’t get the same kind of airflow they would with an air cooler. Air coolers move air around the socket a lot more than an AIO. Cryorig thinks that they have the solution, as their A-series cooler have an extra fan above the pump that helps keep everything cooler, and could improve system stability, especially when overclocking.
Equipped with a 280mm aluminium radiator, two powerful 140mm fans, and support for all major sockets, the A80 is certainly a capable unit on paper. Let’s get the box and take a closer look at what is on offer.
Packaging & Contents
CRYORIG's A80 comes in a fairly large box that measures in at roughly 35.5 cm long, 17.8 cm wide, and 16.5 cm high. On the front, you will find a close-up of the pump and the unit's signature feature, the hybrid airflow fan. A list of other features is also on the front.
All the specifications you would ever want for the radiator, pump, and fan and the supported sockets are listed on the back. General mechanical drawings are also on the back should you want a visual representation to go along with these specifications.
Moving to the left side, all there is to see here is "A80" in big, bold letters.
The right side details the A80's "Hybrid Liquid Cooling" aspect.
Meanwhile, the top simply has the CRYORIG name and company slogan "research idea gear". Otherwise, it's par the course for a CRYORIG box.
CRYORIG has encased everything in a cardboard shell with a thin layer of foam on top. This is pretty much par the course for every liquid cooler that crosses my desk. The foam layer is not as thick as I would like, however, that is a personal nit pick, and what is here is more than adequate in the end.
CRYORIG makes use of their "MultiSeg" mounting hardware design with the A80, which consists of very few parts to really simplify things for the consumer. It is always good to see a well-thought-out design.
Common parts supplied for mounting include:
8x M3 radiator screws
8x M3 short radiator screws
8x washers
4x screw pillars
4x Intel 2011 screw pillars
4x nuts
4x mounting screw nuts
4x AMD mounting screws
2x 140 mm fans
2x User's manual
1x 70 mm fan
1x AMD mounting clip
1x Intel mounting clip
1x Intel backplate
1x AMD backplate
1x pre-filled liquid cooler
A Closer Look
The CRYORIG A80 features an aluminum radiator with a high fins-per-inch (FPI) count of 21 (according to my count), which means high static pressure fans or high RPM fans are required to get the most out of it.
Other than that, it's just a simple run-of-the-mill 280 mm radiator similar to those on many other AIOs.
A80’s aluminum radiator is attached to long, thick and soft rubber tubing that would send the liquid through to the water pump where the magic will happen and your CPU temperatures will go down.
The pump housing features a fan clip for the 70 mm airflow fan that plugs into the top of the pump. When it comes to the tiny 70 mm fan, it has a maximum CFM of just 25 and a maximum RPM of 3000. Considering its specs, it is unlikely to contribute much in terms of temperatures on mainstream systems. However, it could prove useful on overclocked X99 systems where power draw is higher or in situations with heavily overclocked memory. This interesting block design has physical dimensions of L88 x W88 x H52.8 mm and features:
This should - depending on its orientation - improve airflow across the memory or VRM.
Meanwhile, the copper base is typical Asetek - round and with some machining marks. It's not the smoothest but gets the job done. Thermal paste comes pre-applied as well for those without a favorite paste to use.
The 140 mm fans CRYORIG has included are of the QF140 Performance series and have a maximum RPM of 1850 and a maximum CFM of 128.
The fans require up to 12 Volts each when at maximum operating speed and 0.43 ampere. Included fans are powered and regulated by PWM (pulse width modulation).
Installation Process
Since we are running outside of a case, no radiator mounting was necessary. Cryorig includes a set of short screws for mounting the radiator to your case, though many users will end up using the fans in a push or pull pattern that omits these screws from the installation. First, we attached the fans to the radiator in a push fashion using the included screws. The braided cables on the QF140 fans are a nice touch that helps a lot with improving looks and assisting with cable management, as well. Once the fans are mounted, the unit looks really good, with the white and black contrasting well. Installing the fans took just a couple of minutes and the radiator screw holes were all machined properly. Once the fans were secured to the radiator, we turned our attention to securing the pump to the motherboard.
The posts were already slid into the proper position for the LGA 115x socket from the factory, though one had slightly come out of place and needed to be pushed back just a bit. Once we verified the posts were in the 115x position, the MultiSeg backplate slid onto the back of our MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard without issue, offering a perfect fit.
Once you’ve slid the MultiSeg into the motherboard, you secure it by hand-turning the securing screws onto the posts of the backplate. The whole process is very simple and easy to do, taking just minutes. The MultiSeg backplate is really well-made and and is very stiff, not offering any flex. We’ve seen competing units use plastic for their backplates and while these plastic backplates are adequate, they do flex and won’t offer the longevity or support capability that the MultiSeg hardware does. Also of note, you can install the MultiSeg mount prior to a CPU being installed as it doesn’t interfere with the CPU securing mechanism. Thanks to this design, CPU swaps can be done with the bracket in place and only removing the pump head, making things to be much easier should you decide to do a CPU upgrade down the road.
Once the MultiSeg backplate is installed and you’ve installed the CPU to the socket if it wasn’t already in place, the next step is to attach the pump/block, creating a secure mount to the CPU. This step is very simple, as the ring mounting bracket for Intel processors is already installed onto the pump/block, allowing the block to be screwed onto the four posts of the backplate. AMD users will need to swap the mounting hardware on the pump and use the different backplate that Cryorig includes for AMD users, which is also a very high quality piece of hardware. I’m definitely impressed with Cryorig and their mounting system, it’s one of the best I’ve ever used.
Once the pump is placed, we simply secure it by screwing the hold down screws evenly, so as to not put too much force on one particular corner. Also, just tighten the screws to the point where they stop and don’t torque too much, or you will risk snapping the posts. I also plugged in the PWM fan connector to the CPU_FAN1 header at this point, since it was right there. The MSI board I use to test doesn’t have a ton of clearance, but the Cryorig A80 installed just fine, giving plenty of clearance for the VRM heatsinks and surrounding components. The Cryorig airflow fan is a beauty, I must say. Once mounted onto the block, it gives the cooler a very unique look that might surprise those who haven’t seen the A80 in action before. The fan can go in either a push or pull fashion, but we’ve opted for push for our testing. Once the pump/block has been mounted, it must be powered. The Cryorig A80 is relying on a SATA connection to power everything connected to the A80, including the pump and accessory fans. Thankfully, the cables coming from the pump/block are flat and can be cleanly routed. We connected the PWM cable directly to the motherboards CPU fan connector so that the fans could be controlled by the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 UEFI. As mentioned, the SATA connection provides all power to the A80 and attached fans, so the PWM cable only serves for fan monitoring and adjustment purposes.
Overall, the installation process for the A80 is a very straightforward affair, especially for those who have previous experience with installing AIO coolers. The MultiSeg mounting mechanism once again proved to be easy to use and well-manufactured and the included hardware was all machined properly and matched properly with the kit. Let’s get down to some stress testing now and see just what the A80 is capable of when facing some stiff competition.
Test System & Methology
Idle results recorded using RealTemp after sitting idle at desktop for 15 minutes. Load temperatures were recorded after running 30 minutes of Prime 95, which is one of the most stressful CPU testing programs out there. All testing was done outside of a case with an ambient room temperature of 72 degrees. We used Antec Formula 7 Nano Diamond thermal compound applied in the pea-method for all testing to ensure results were as accurate and apple-to-apples as possible, as the thermal interface material included with heatsinks and AIO coolers varies from manufacturer to manufacturer and variances in thermal interface material quality can cause performance results to be skewed incorrectly.
Lets take a look at our temperature testing results under stock and overclocked conditions. We tested with the fans set to 100%, to give an idea of the maximum performance the unit is capable of and compare all units at their best possible performance. We tested the Cryorig A80 with the on-pump fan both installed and removed to see what kind of cooling benefits would be provided by the on-pump fan included with the A80, as well.
Temperature
Here, we can see the the Cryorig A80 is able to beat the next best cooler in our lineup. Once we crank up the voltage and overclock on our I7 4790K, we see the temperatures rise quite a bit under Prime 95 testing, pushing the CPU close to thermal limits with certain coolers. The A80 is able to keep the 4790K amazingly cool under the very intense testing, never letting the CPU get above the 75 degree mark, something the other coolers simply aren’t capable of. It only rises two degrees over its stock setting, showing the true efficiency of the A80.
The on-pump airflow fan certainly improved our VRM temperatures in a very noticeable way, but the temperatures weren’t in a dangerous territory to begin with. We can definitely see an argument for this cooler improving potential longevity of the motherboard by reducing the VRM temperatures, but there is a definite noise factor that the end user will need to consider. We could hear the on-pump fan and it produced the signature noise that small fans are known for and though it wasn’t annoying, it was noticeable.
Noise Level
The fans on the A80 didn’t go a whisper above 39dBa at stock, which is as quiet as the best AIOs on the market, the only way to get any quieter is to switch out for a high-end air cooler.
Overclocking did cause a tiny increase in volume, peaking at 56dBa.
Conclusion
CRYORIG has demonstrated its ability to design air coolers, but this first AIO solution is no different.The A80 is a unique heatsink thanks to a new hybrid design, in terms of performance both in terms of temperatures and silence it manages to keep up with even much more expensive and renowned solutions . The design is very simple with a classic black and white color scheme, there are no LEDs and the fan on the pump/waterblock is not the most beautiful thing to look at, but the latter certainly helps to have a few degrees less in the area socket especially if we use CPUs that heat up a lot.The build quality is good with an easy installation system and an extended 6-year warranty.
The CRYROIG A80 does not stand out for its aesthetic appearance but I focus a lot on concrete performance, temperatures and silence among the top of the category with a competitive price.